Posts Tagged ‘Tart cherries’

I just took some photos around our farm in Hart, and they are now on our home page. You will see some big leaves and blossoms and a teeny little summer squash (soon we’ll be harvesting some. We have some zucchini getting ready now, but summer squash seem always to lag behind.). The three bright red cherries are Montmorency (tart/”sour”/ “pie”) cherries, ready to be harvested. We’ve been hand-picking some for the market since June 22, and will probably have some through the week of the 4th of July. Light sweet cherries and black sweet cherries are the next photos. We are hand-picking them currently, and will certainly have them through this weekend. Dave hopes we will still have some through next week (the week of July 4th) as well, but that depends a lot on the weather and demand. The next photo shows some apples sizing up; we hope that these will make the grade to be called SweeTango(R) in mid-August. The final photo shows our earliest sweet corn, in tassel and growing nicely. We expect to be eating some in mid-July!

The photos on our home page were taken July 11. They are of early sweet corn, peaches, apricots, black sweet cherries, tart (Montmorency) cherries, and our tomatoes which are not ripe yet. We are growing all of these right here in Hart!

Life on the farm is NOT kind of laid back at this time of year! (Sorry, John Denver!) Dave has been busy shaking cherries with his crew this week. (I hand-pick the Montmorency cherries we are selling at the market.) Oceana County is one of the USA’s top producers of tart (Montmorency) cherries. The cherries Dave shakes are processed into cherry pie filling, dried cherries, tart cherry juice concentrate, etc.

However, there is still time for a few special moments with grandchildren! Thanks to Amie Van Amberg for shooting a photo of Dave with grandson Theo, and for sharing it! This was at the end of a long day of cherry shaking for Dave, and Amie was taking 6-month photos of Theo. Our daughter Zekara put her son on Grampy’s lap, and Amie caught this sweet moment on film.

We have two great varieties of apricots ripening now–Harcot, with a punch of tangy-sweet apricot flavor, and Hargrand, baseball-size and juicily sweet! We’re pretty much finished with light sweet cherries (the heat/humidity/rain did not help our last two trees), but have two varieties of black sweet cherries to finish picking. We will have Montmorency (tart) cherries into next week, when we’ll add Balaton tart cherries to our offerings. (Balatons are darker, firmer, and sweeter than Montmorency cherries. They have a red juice and make great pies, as well as being very tasty for fresh eating!) Enjoy the short seasons of fresh local fruit while you can!